JFrazer
1863
Hunter minions, in general, are so fragile that you mostly have to hold on to them until you can combo them out on the board. This removes one of the most effective combos. A buzzard just doesn’t survive long enough to put on the board and get some use out of the next turn, and it will be just as bad at 2 health. UTH is still going to be worth playing (albeit less so), it just isn’t going to have a buzzard around to combo with.
I may be over-reacting, but this buzzard change feels like they’re basically pushing hunters away from zoo decks and more towards board control until you ramp your mana. With a cheap buzzard, you could throw down critter swarms and restock your hand. With essentially no early game card draw capability now, you’re forced to play for the longer term.
I think the Hunter problem has been it is just so one dimensional. You know exactly how a Hunter will play. While the Buzzard nerf is overdue I do wonder what Hunters do now. They were always a one trick pony, now that trick has been nerfed twice this year. Getting something in Naxx that gave them more options would have been welcome I think.
edit: after posting this I got my ass handed to me by a hunter playing sea giant and no buzzard. Well played, well played.
There’s a number of folks on reddit’s competitive hearthstone board who have made Legend with a Hunter built without Buzzard or UTH. I hadn’t heard of it before the Buzzard nerf fuss kicked up, but apparently it’s at least a two trick pony.
Honestly, though, the no-Unleash Hunter is just dead meat to my Shaman or Priest.
Heck, I’ve tweaked my way into being able to get Hunters dead a lot on the Priest. Now Zoo Warlock and Control Warrior is kicking my ass. Gah! (Not so many of the second, but the first is a problem ><)
slantz
1867
Yeah, I had one for a while. I’m with you about trying to get a 3-attack guy there, but I found the wolf almost always gave +1 to another unit, and as a surprise at that. So when my opponent played an early minion with one additional health than I had attack, the wolf often made the difference.
Note that I’m not running one now, meaning it’s not the world’s best pick, but it was stronger than you might think.
I’ve updated my current version of the deck in the spoiler tag again on the deck page. I just added a newly-crafted Sylvanas and a second Sludge Belcher back in, removing an Avenge and a Shade of Naxxramas.
The synergies are getting even stronger now, as both Sylvanas and KT combo well with each other and many other cards in the deck. I just have to hope I haven’t made it too expensive, but I think it might not be so bad in the control-heavy meta right now.
Pfft, yeah, but like 10m of those are just DDOS-bots.
slantz
1870
I’m curious if that’s lifetime, or “active in the last 30 days”. The former doesn’t mean too much for a F2P game where a button press or two in the new Blizzard installer can translate into a “player.”
The B.net launcher is attracting a lot of WoW players to take a look, at the tail end of the xpack for sure.
What’s odd is they didn’t have a unified launcher years ago, really.
Looking at your deck list, I’ve decided that one of my problems was variance: I think I had too many different things so my deck wasn’t predictable enough. So, I trimmed to focus on cards I know I like 2 of: dropped my last Abusive Sergeant, Shade of Naxx (I found I was never really getting upside from him, and the stealth wasn’t that useful), and harvest golem (aldor + scarlet crusader fill my 3 slot).
I’m waffling between a 2/1 vs 1/2 Sunfury /Argus split. I really like the bonus +1 health against, say, mages, as it gives me another turn to hold out against fireplace pokes on recruits, crusaders, Argent squires.
I re-add a sea giant, because the way I see it he’s more a blood Knight replacement than a legendary replacement (possibly very undercosted, but guaranteed 8/8 instead of guaranteed 3/3).
I’m also to running Stormwind Champion again. The surprise effect of his buffs is nice, and he’s big enough to draw hard removal. The way I see it, he’s actually multiplicative with other minions, while sea giant/frost wolf are just additive. He’s more better with more minions, instead of just being fixed amount better. Words brain no work today. I’m sure he’s not the single best option, but I’m a little lacking on the upper end of the power curve.
At this point, the low end seems pretty stable. I think it’s largely a question of legendary replacements.
I’m still struggling to get out of the teens. I’ve been losing a number of close matches that were down to single card draws, so i think I’d be doing significantly better with a little tweaking (I wonder if Guardian of kings would help in those situations).
Kadath
1873
Via Reddit, this might be my favorite play ever.
prolix
1874
Brutal. I had one priest vs. priest game where we got to the end of the deck, and I kept pinging his Cleric and then healing it to make him draw, but nothing like this. He eventually Shadow Word Pained his own Cleric, but it was too little too late.
That play had to be especially rough since the shaman’s previous play was pretty sweet, stealing both of the Clerics with double Reincarnate on Sylvanas.
Can’t. Stop. Laughing.
If I’d been recording, this would so have gone to Trolden.
I’ll let you imagine exactly how I got there - it involved the cabal shadow priest, a faceless of mine and two of his…oh, and the one on the right? It’s from my slamming the 11/9 deathlord into his second copy. I didn’t even get to play KT when he conceded!
That very good.
In happy news I have got to rank 11 with my secrets mage deck. I swapped in some sludge as suggested and also added some ooze. This is the highest I have ever got with a self constructed deck. Pretty pleased with myself.
I’ve updated my Survivaldin yet again. I like where it is now.
I mentioned before that I wanted a 2-cost 3-attack. I’ve settled on 2 Faerie Dragons for this purpose. The spell immunity means that control decks need to think twice about how to deal with them. They can’t be targets for my blessings, but that’s ok, because they’re cheap enough I can drop them with Argent squires or crusaders.
I added an Ironbeak Owl. I needed some kind of silence, and he’s the cheapest one available to Paladins. He’s great to use on Sludge Belchers, which are pretty ubiquitous, and are often used to protect something I really want to kill (especially important because I have NO direct damage). Similarly nice on Sylvanas, whose pretty popular these days in deathrattle decks.
Re-added one haunted creeper. Still not sure about him. Added a Guardian of Kings for top-end power and a little hero survivability.
To make room, I removed a Sunfury and Argus, since I’m seeing less aggro decks the last couple days anyways. I have enough taunt on the high end with Sludge Belchers and Sunfury. Besides, the Faerie Dragons have virtual-taunt almost as good as the knife juggler.
prolix
1879
I got Malygos in a deck recently, and tried to build a rogue deck around it. Not having too much luck though. If I lean toward card draw I get crushed by aggressive decks; if I lean toward survivability I lose the card draw I need to get to Malygos. Plus, it’s kind of a one-trick pony that is susceptible to hard removal. I’m beginning to think it’s just not viable.
When it goes off, though, it’s hilarious. Anyone had any success with this build?
Tim_N
1880
Any of you guys watch the round of 16 in the hearthstone championship this weekend? It was streaming on twitch, just ended as I am typing this. You should try and check out some recordings of the stream, really intense matchups on both days. The very last game was just crazy fun. I wasn’t convinced of Hearthstone as an e-sport until now, actually. It still relies alot more on luck than you’d want in an e-sport, but it’s just fun to watch. More fun to watch and follow than Dota 2, in my opinion, and I really enjoyed watching the international last year.
Brakara
1881
Yeah, I watched the first four matches yesterday and they were all great, so I can’t wait to see the top 8 matches on Friday.
